Blanc agrees new United deal

Laurent Blanc has signed a new one-year deal with Manchester United, to start with immediate effect.

The former France captain signed for United from Inter Milan on a one-year deal to replace Jaap Stam at the beginning of last season.

Despite being heavily criticised for his role in an unusually leaky defence, the 36-year-old retained the backing of manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

And though United have been linked with big-money bids for Alessandro Nesta and Rio Ferdinand, Ferguson was always ready to offer Blanc a new deal.

"We are delighted," said Ferguson. "Laurent Blanc has been at the World Cup and we have been waiting his return. It has simply been a matter of agreeing with agents."

Blanc's performances improved as he settled into the Premiership and he is looking forward to another championship challenge at Old Trafford.

"I am very happy and can't wait for the new season to start," he said.

Blanc insisted when he joined United in August last year that he would play only the one season before hanging up his boots.

Indeed, in February he revealed his managerial ambitions and confirmed he would not follow Ferguson's lead and backtrack on his decision to retire.

But the United boss was determined to persuade Blanc into playing another season, particularly after the Frenchman turned in a series of solid performances towards the end of last season.

Ferguson declared in March: "He has definitely added something at the back and I have still not given up hope that he will take a leaf out of my book and decide to carry on for a bit longer.

"He certainly has it in him to do so."

It seems Ferguson's persuasions were successful, giving Blanc one final chance to win the Champions League.

Despite an illustrious international career, which has yielded winners medals from the World Cup and European Championships, Blanc has never won Europe's most prestigious competition.

It was Champions League football that proved one of the main motivations for Blanc's switch to Old Trafford, where he linked up with Ferguson at the fourth time of asking.

Blanc's tortuous trail to the Premiership began at Montpellier in 1983 and six years later he kicked off his international career with France in the Republic of Ireland.

His first of many major trophies arrived in 1996 when his single season at Barcelona - which followed short periods with Lazio, Nimes, St Etienne and Auxerre - was capped by victory in the European Cup Winners' Cup.

Blanc's move back home to Marseilles in 1997 helped him to establish even stronger links with his national team and the homecoming corresponded with the skyrocketing of France's fortunes.

In his central defensive berth alongside future Chelsea star Marcel Desailly, Blanc fashioned the bedrock upon which his nation's fortunes could build.

But his controversial sending-off for tangling with Slaven Bilic during the semi-final against Croatia ruled him out of the biggest night of all.

At least France's European Championship triumph last year enabled Blanc to bow out on a high - he called time on his international career after his 95th appearance, seven years after he first considered his future in the wake of France's last-gasp failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup.